Summer 2017 marked an art world
trifecta, the Venice Biennale coinciding
with Documenta (held every
five years) and Skulptur Projekte
Münster (held every 10 years). In
Kassel and Münster, what began as
modest municipal undertakings to
reconnect postwar Germany with the
global art community have become
internationally recognized for their
influence. Sources of great civic
pride, these shows depart from
Venice and the art fair model with
their refreshing non-commercial
slant. As British artist Jeremy Deller
commented to The Art Newspaper,
"There are no yachts in Münster, and
that's important."
First launched in 1977 by Klaus
Bussmann and Kasper König, Skulptur
Projekte Münster (SPM) has become
a bellwether of public sculpture. The
10-year intervals allow for "longterm
study that consistently reflects
the current of a particular time,"
in the words of 2007 curator Brigitte
Franzen. Its un-themed curatorial
approach calls for invited artists to
visit the town and submit site-specific
proposals. With each iteration,
some finished projects remain.
...see the entire review in the print version of November's Sculpture magazine.

The best group shows spark conversations
between artworks, revealing
new dimensions and offering fresh
insights. "/spek-tr m/ variance
of sculpture and form," which showcased
works by many of Kansas City's
best-known sculptors, did just that.
Studios Inc is a nonprofit studio complex
and residency program located
just east of KC's Crossroads Arts
District. It maintains a collection
consisting of works donated by
resident artists as a condition of their
three-year tenure. Studios Inc's
associate director, Robert Gann, drew
from these holdings for "/spektr
m/." A Minimalist aesthetic dominated
the show, many works
evidencing an aura of quiet self-containment
and an attraction to
domestic and landscape references.
All of the featured artists make the
selection of materials a key part
of their work. May Tveit's chosen
material is wheat straw, bundled
into prickly blocks and encased in
solid hues of plastic hard-coat
paint. Frosted Flakes (2009), a wallmounted
display of three blocks
painted in blue and yellow, exudes
an attitude of renegade Mini -
malism. The color both muffles and
emphasizes the work's relationship to
the cereal-producing agrarian landscape
around Kansas City.
...see the entire review in the print version of November's Sculpture magazine.

The best group shows spark conversations
between artworks, revealing
new dimensions and offering fresh
insights. "/spek-tr m/ variance
of sculpture and form," which showcased
works by many of Kansas City's
best-known sculptors, did just that.
Studios Inc is a nonprofit studio complex
and residency program located
just east of KC's Crossroads Arts
District. It maintains a collection
consisting of works donated by
resident artists as a condition of their
three-year tenure. Studios Inc's
associate director, Robert Gann, drew
from these holdings for "/spektr
m/." A Minimalist aesthetic dominated
the show, many works
evidencing an aura of quiet self-containment
and an attraction to
domestic and landscape references
...see the entire review in the print version of November's Sculpture magazine.

Davin Watne, Life is a Collision, 2008.
Taxidermy mount and mirrors, dimensions
variable. From "/spek-tr m/."

Much discussion about the history
of 20th-century sculpture has
focused on its emergence from under
the shadow of painting. With
Minimalism's return to the object,
the conversation with painting
suddenly seemed irrelevant. Yet, as
with so much in art, conversations
never truly end, they evolve and
spiral in new directions.
The work of Brooklyn artist Rachel
Beach appears, at first glance, to
be a manner of painting in threedimensional
space. But her recent
exhibition, "Mid-Sentence," which I
first saw in Halifax at the Saint Mary's
University Art Gallery, offered a conversation
about paintings as objects,
and the history it cited is, of necessity,
more complex than the translation
of Modernist ideas from two to
three dimensions, a strategy that
marked so much sculpture from the
first half of the 20th century...see the entire review in the print version of November's Sculpture magazine.

Rachel Beach, installation view of
"Mid-Sentence," 2016.

Athens, Greece:
Documenta 14

by Thalia Vrachopoulos

At the opening press conference
of Documenta 14, "Learning From
Athens," artistic director Adam
Szymczyk stated, "The great lesson
is that there are no lessons." These
elusive words may well have been
a disclaimer for an exhibition
that rambled on without aim. Such
large events are difficult to manage
in general, but Documenta's Athens
endeavor required viewers to
accept much of the responsibility
for realizing the show's potential
and to make a sizable time commitment
to text-based art. Though
conceived as a multi-disciplinary
project geared, one would think,
to the art-loving public in the age
of pluralism, the show's goals
were so abstruse as to require a
high level of expertise...see the entire review in the print version of November's Sculpture magazine.